From Roy, I see that Rod Dreher is picking up the whine about how Christian churches are not doing enough to calm the adequacy fears of the men of America. This irritation is a common one on the fundie right; read their blogs and magazines for only a short period of time and you’ll find endless amounts of whining that church is for girls. I’m honestly shocked that they haven’t come around to segregating the sexes and making women stand in the back yet in order to make sure that the men in their world never have a single moment of doubt that Penis Makes Better. It’s an article of faith in these complaints that more men don’t go to church because it’s not manly enough—too many songs and bake sales, not enough boxing matches. But tigtog found a commenter who has a likelier explanation as to why you see a lot more female butts in the pews:
As far as the “men don’t go to church” thing, it is simple: 90% of self-identified Christians think church sucks, but they want their kids to get a religous upbringing. So the wife has to drag the kids to church, while Poppa stays home to watch football and go fishing, because, you know, he’s in charge and can do what he wants. Misandry, my ample bottom.
Ding! That reflects my experiences growing up and meeting the church ladies crowd. The generous interpretation of their lack of husband company at church was that Jesus can’t compete with football, but the overall idea is that church—like shopping and housework—is a domestic chore that’s too boring to give to anyone but the wife. So long as she’s holding down the salvation and grocery car-pushing duties for the family, men are safe from hellfire and hunger. Then a feedback loop kicks in. More men see that other men stay home from church and so church begins to feel like a girl’s club and football is more fun to watch and so they start dropping out, too.
But considering that church is such a powerful way to transmit political power and conservative ideals,* it’s no wonder that the anxious masculinity crowd wants that male audience. And since they’re not about to attack the notion that unpleasant chores like church should be handled solely by women, they instead come up with loony notions about making church more like an action movie, presumably so it can compete better with football. (Having tried that tactic to lure men away from the football game and into the kitchen to dry dishes over the holidays, I can assure you that the end result is no more men in the kitchen, but a lot more broken dishes.) Dreher contributes by making certain assumptions about male superiority that don’t even hold up to the whiff of a reality check.
I believe one reason so many male Christians responded deeply to Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was because it depicted a masculine Jesus who chose to endure excruciating pain to rescue those he loved. The Christian faith teaches that this is what Jesus did, but somehow the intense physical courage that that act of love required is easy to overlook. Gibson didn’t overlook it. The Jesus Christ of his film embodied manliness par excellence: a strong, brave man who was willing to suffer and die to save others. After I saw that film in a press preview, then went to Ash Wednesday services and heard the plush priest give a homily about how Lent is really supposed to be about learning to love ourselves more, I wanted to slug the guy.
In case you can’t tell, Dreher is Catholic, and he’s yet another example of how, aside from mildly different approaches to the actual way services are conducted, politically conservative Catholic operators are becoming indistinguishable from the Protestant ones—in both cases, they’re veering dangerously close to acting like theocracy is the final hope for Republican party dominance. It bears repeating: Catholics who buy into the Rod Dreher/Bill Donohue view of Catholicism as just another flavor of fundie insanity are not helping their fellow Catholics. Christian Dominionists think Catholics are heathen idolators and while they’ll look the other way while building political power, they can’t be trusted to be much more tolerant of Catholics than they are of Muslims or atheists or Jews once they get that power.
Anyway, I want to repeat what I said in the comments at Roy’s place on this Dreher quote: Who says that painful sacrifice for love is a masculine quality? Dreher assumes it’s self-evident, because Men Are Better Than Women. His other suggestions—make mass more poetic, inject more calls to action,** make the mass more emotionally powerful—all assume that men are more intelligent, more in love with beauty, more active, and more emotional than women. If there’s a positive quality out there, rest assured that Dreher’s willing to imply men have more of it.
But where’s the evidence that men tend to put their bodies on the line as loving sacrifices more than women? I mean, the very idea of that made me snort with laughter. Not that men are incapable and far from it, but the very reason that you have more female butts in pews in the first place is that sacrifice for love and god is considered a feminine duty in our culture. As for pain, it’s true that action movies provide us fantasies of men who muscle through pain to save the world, but in the real world, the painful sacrifice of your body for pregnancy and childbirth is so common as to be downright mundane. (That particular sacrifice is apparently made 3 times a second all around the world.) From sheer numbers alone, it’s safe to say that physical-sacrifice-from-love is an overwhelming feminine trait.
I don’t want to get all neo-Freudian on you, but Dreher’s insistence of reforming a common female experience of great pain for great love into a masculine virtue smacks of womb envy, or at bare minimum, stems from a desire to downplay any positive qualities women have. I’d suggest reading The Wimp Factor by Stephen Ducat for more information—there is evidence that anxious masculinity correlates with a desire to minimize the drama of pregnancy and childbirth or at least assert that these painful dramas actually belong to men, though I’m not convinced that womb envy begets misogyny so much as misogyny creates this desire to deny that women have any virtues or unique experiences.
*It can be a powerful way to transmit progressive ideals, as well, but I suspect the men complaining that men don’t go to church in these articles aren’t so interested in looking at churches as places to organize peace marches.
**Not too subtle how he’s viewing the church as a place to organize people on behalf of the Republican party, huh?
117 Responses to “Put down your superhero costume and come to church”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
This is such a minor point that I feel the need to apologize for it, but I can’t help but point out that the whole “church or football” dichotomy doesn’t exist in most churches.
Even if you go to a Protestant church where they will keep you in there for 2+ hours, you will still be sitting on your couch with a big-ass sandwich by kickoff time.
Of course on the west coast it’s a bit different, but in the South and Midwest, you can go to church and watch football, too.
The substance of the post is spot-on, though, I think. Taking the children to church (just like anything having to do with raising the children) in many households is considered the woman’s responsibility, and the man can either tag along or choose not to, based on his preferences.
APS
Yeah, it’s probably mostly an excuse, though you can always point to the hours of pre-game coverage as something that’s more important than church.
Is it just me, or is this version of Jesus is pretty much indistinguishable from the Spartans in 300?
jfpbookworm, now look what you made me watch again!
It’s raining 300 men
Thanks!
the whole “church or football” dichotomy doesn’t exist in most churches.
Well, ok. Replace it with “church or sleeping in” or “church or WoW”, or whatever. It’s not as if football itself is the only reason more men don’t go to church. The bottom line is that men feel like it’s their prerogative to go to church or not as they see fit, and for women it can be a family chore.
I will say, though, that I think the idea that church is not for men might be relatively recent — growing up, I don’t remember any families at our church where mom and the kids attended while dad stayed home and dicked around. Women might have been more active in the community of the church, though. And of course I grew up in a rural area, in a really religious part of the country.
Almost, except Jesus’ abs weren’t as ripped.
Not to mention that most churches encourage things like service and community outreach, and women are overwhelmingly more likely to participate in these kinds of activities, even outside of a religious setting. I think a grand total of 9 out of 70 or so members of my public high school’s Key Club were guys, and most of them couldn’t be bothered to come to the meetings. There were lots of fairly “macho” service events for them too - Habitat for Humanity days, Special Olympics events, trash pickups, etc.
That’s what the spear was for.
(I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Donohue.)
I personally find the “make church more manly” theme hilariously funny. Why? Well, most men (especially over 40) are hypocondriacs and wouldn’t want to “get physical” for fear of breaking/hurting something!
Actually, to some degree this “only the wiminz are coming to church” is a specifically Christian issue. E.g., even though in Judaism it’s explicitly considered the case that the woman is responsible for the kids’ religious upbringing (hence the matrilineality of belonging to the Jewish religion), the men still go as often as the women — even in Conservative and Reform and Reconstructionist shuls where the men and women do sit together.
I’ve heard conservative Christians blame the “feminization of Christian worship” for things (i.e. men are more repelled by cheezy “modern” hymns than women — which may be true, due to how boys and girls are socialized … girls are socialized to like certain things that boys are socialized to find “hokey” and “girlish”), but this stands out as perhaps closest to what, from my perspective as a Jew and hence an outsider, is the root of the issue in Christianity
Who says that painful sacrifice for love is a masculine quality?
The problem is precisely that our Western version of sex stereotypes says that painful sacrifice (which, let’s face it, is something every woman who has a kid does — it’s called childbirth — but few men do) is a feminine quality.
Pardon my irreverence here, it would seem to me that a (straight) Christian man is asked to go to church to worship some vaguely androgynous dude who has enough of a macho story involving ability to withstand pain and carry a heavy object to be a sex symbol (and hence a source of jeolousy when you see your wife worshiping him). But to top it all off, this (androgynous) guy is better than you as he’s in touch with his feminine side — and you are urged to do the same and emulate him by doing feminine things like painful sacrifice for love?
Of course macho men wouldn’t want to go to such a church. You’ll notice that the sort of church environment the macho men want would tend to, um, ignore the actual message of the Gospels?
Is it just me, or is this version of Jesus is pretty much indistinguishable from the Spartans in 300? - jfpbookworm
I betcha there’s enough material on this similarity for a dissertation that’ll earn a Ph.D./D.Div. at any decent (i.e. non-fundy) seminary.
jfp,
It’s pretty similiar, although Jesus has less opportunity for over-the-top melodramatic speeches. And the 300 are more in love with each other than with any people they’re defending.
Most of the churches I’ve gone to are closer to 50-50 on the female-male ratio, but liberal men would feel more compulsion to support their wives in domestic chores. Besides their wives are less likely to just let them sit at home. And football in my present LBGT-friendly congregation is only a joking distraction (although many hissed at our curate when he made jokingly prayed for the Saints to beat the Bears).
It was pretty common where I grew up. And I did live in a fairly rural, very religious part of the country as well. However, I was raised Catholic in a sea of Baptists/Pentecostals/etc., and since our tiny Catholic church was mostly made up of my mom’s family, a few older immigrants, and Filipino doctors, most of the dads weren’t Catholic. Not that they went to any other church either, but they definitely weren’t catholic. But, the one of my mom’s still living brothers that is also still Catholic is very devout, of the Bill Donohue variety.
It sounds like the wingnut churches are facing some of the same issues that the catholics have dealt with repeatedly, starting with the first suppressions of Mariolatry back in the 12th century or so: how do you get the women to do all the work while still reserving all the power to the men? The catholics managed it (insofar as they have) with strict hierarchy and law, and a sort of separate-but-unequal promotion path, but the wingnuts don’t really have a scriptural peg to hang that kind of thing on (or the infrastructure to make it work, at least not yet).
So they have to get more men in the trenches. Which is hard not only because of the macho but also because the right-wing economic forces that the wingnut churches front for make it very difficult for a man in their service to put in the kind of volunteer hours required. (When I was a kid, most of our church vestry was men, but it was also a time when my father was considered unusual as a professional for working a consistent 10+ hour day.)
men are more repelled by cheezy “modern” hymns than women
This doesn’t ring true for one important reason: men are, by and large, the people who get to pick the church’s hymns. If the church is large enough to have a musical director, that person is, in my experience, almost always male (though stuff like leading the children’s choir is usually fobbed off on a female volunteer). If the church is too small for such specialization, it’s usually the decision of the pastor or deacons, who also tend to be male in denominations where this sort of thing is an issue.
If the dudes don’t like the music, they have no one to blame but themselves.
Though I do think that, if some men eschew church because they really see it as feminizing or emasculating, the emphasis on performance, music, and aesthetic expression probably has something to do with it. Along the same lines as the way the wingnuts have criticized Barack Obama as being “gay” for promoting political book groups.
Of course macho men wouldn’t want to go to such a church. You’ll notice that the sort of church environment the macho men want would tend to, um, ignore the actual message of the Gospels?
Yep. It’s pretty funny to see someone insist that the same Jesus who said, “Turn the other cheek” and constantly preached that Christians need to be humble would approve of him punching out a priest.
Sara at Orcinus had a great piece on this sort of issue. Why are all of these jokers so worried about how appearing so “manly”? If church has to be hyper-masculinized in order to appeal to these anxious little boys, what does that say about these anxious little boys?
I would think it was hilarious if men were avoiding church because it’s too “girly.” In my experience, Catholic men don’t go to church. Fundie men do. Fundie men need the reinforcement and talking points offered by the minister each week so they can use them at their chats at the office. Fundie men also need to make sure the womenz aren’t up to anything bad over at the church - like thinking for themselves.
Ok, I’ll throw a theory out on the stoop and see if the cat licks it up.
Maybe these particular men really don’t like the message of Christ. Jesus spoke of love and mercy and tolerance, and only had that one meltdown in the church. Maybe these guys don’t want to hear about loving one another and taking care of their fellow humans, but then that would mean that they’re not Christians, and, well, that can’t be right.
So they’ve decided that, since those messages are all girly and all, that it must be the messenger (the church) that’s making it sound that way, and that if they just keep rooting around, they’ll find the manly masculine message they just know is there.
They don’t want Jesus. They want Chuck Norris.
Rod Dreher announced that he had converted to the Orthodox Church last fall.
A fine theory, merciless.
Amen, merciless, amen.
Plus, lots of church services are plain boring.
I think women are socialized to politely accept their lot of service, which includes smiling and quietly submitting to do boring stuff, while men get to play hooky. Because they work so hard the rest of the week, or whatev.
In my experience, Catholic men don’t go to church. Fundie men do. Fundie men need the reinforcement and talking points offered by the minister each week so they can use them at their chats at the office. Fundie men also need to make sure the womenz aren’t up to anything bad over at the church - like thinking for themselves.
Any Catholic man who actually believes in the tenets of his faith will generally at least pay lip service to the idea of attending mass with a degree of regularity, as Catholicism believes it a relatively severe sin not to hear mass once a week. According to the Catholic church, it’s butts in seats every Sunday (regardless of what kind of genitalia is connected to those butts) or you go to hell. The Catholics I knew growing up took this to heart, which might be why I wasn’t aware of this “men don’t go to church” thing until recently.
So, no, actually, it’s not just a matter of the fundie men being more obsessive or sheeplike or whatever. In fact, I’d guess that the denominations with a real problem in this regard are more likely to be evangelical/fundie churches than Catholic or mainline ones.
Also, I’d like to add my props to the heap for Merciless.
One thing we should be somewhat wary of, I think, is discussing this observation (made by an idiot, it can’t hurt to recall) without really investigating the degree to which the observation is actually true.
I know a lot of people are anecdotally confirming this stuff but I personally don’t see a huge preponderance of women at my church.
It would be interesting to know if this whole “manly men staying home” phenomenon actually exists, and if so, in what denominations it’s most pronounced.
APS
On that note, here’s something kind of interesting:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-673X(198403)25%3A3%3C247%3AWPASDI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V
It’s just an abstract, but apparently the point of the paper was to examine the hypothesis that differences in church attendance between men and women can be accounted for by differences in workforce participation.
That thesis was apparently rejected because most of the difference actually comes from the fact that men who are not in the workforce generally do not attend church, which working men and women attend at similar rates.
Not sure what that means exactly, but it’s an interesting piece of information.
APS
Which is why, I think, when you see fundie men spouting off biblical verses and “calls to action” their focus is completely on the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures; what-have-you) and not on the New.
Actually reading of the bible would tell you that a lot of the hate, nastiness and doom’and’gloom embodied in those books was over-ridden by the preaching and words of Jesus.
Amanda:
Of course. It’s foreplay.
Strange, I was raised Irish Catholic on Long Island and I never encountered the ‘too girly’ meme.
If I were at home, I’d pull out a book or two and write a bit about Nietzsche and religion. The whole manly religion thing is for sure not new. Fellow at U Chicago, whose name I cannot currently remember, has written on it. If I remember when I get home, I’ll at least give you all the name.
(Dang, some days I miss doing religious studies. Grad school and finding an academic job is a pressure cooker there, much more than in my field, and I’m glad I didn’t go into religious studies on that level, but it’s so interesting. Maybe someday when I’m rich I’ll go get my Ph.D in religious studies just to do it. Like I’ll ever be rich.)
First, thousand thanks for the props. I’m blushing.
Tom, the “too girly” theme never came up in my family either (east Texas Nazarenes and Baptists). I think it’s a modern phenomenon brought about by a constant, pants-wetting fear of everything, exacerbated by teevee he-men, Rush Limbaugh, and George Bush.
Now I’m getting scared…
@hp — and much of the rest of it, especially some of the Fundies’ favorite passages, was ruled unimportant for Christians by Paul. (i.e. all of the law in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers)
>>>They don’t want Jesus. They want Chuck Norris.
Jeebus, Texas Ranger.
Along with the long history of Catholics struggling with this stuff (see the post above), protestant churches in the US (and England) have been whining about “the womenz are taking over, oh noes!” since, at least, the late 1600s.
For example, the Puritan’s badly managed half-way covenant of the late 1600s was prompted, in part, because as they prospered as a colony, and more and more families started living out on their farms instead of in the village square, men quit going through the public declaration of found faith that would make them full members of the church. This meant they weren’t voters either - in church or colonial matters. Which made them restless and even less inclined to do what the old guys said. So the old guys, eventually, tried to bring them back in as civil voters by saying that only baptism (the half-way covenant with God) was needed for secular voting rights. Which, naturally, only offended those men who were really concerned about their spiritual failings by suggesting that they never would be able to take the public test of faith, and for the rest, convinced them to that they were right to let it all slide because now they could vote on the stuff they really cared about anyway. Eventually, more or less, the Puritan establishment will turn into Congregationalists or Methodists….
Both the First Great Awakening (1730s/40s), and especially the Second Great Awakening (1800s/30s - this one gives us the Mormons and the Shakers, as well as a lot of really-freaky experimental sects), were motivated in part because as active church membership fell in comparison to the overall population, the active members left were mostly women (why do you think there were all those perceived ‘extra’ women around for Mormon men to marry in multiples?). A lot of the preaching in both movements was by men and aimed at brining the menz back into active roles and membership in the churches.
These complaints, like Dreher’s, are nothing new - and one of the things that puzzles me most about him and his contemporary ilk is that he/they don’t seem to know that.
Amanda,
Your hypothesis doesn’t really hold true for the Catholic Church, because as you may or may not know, the entire Catholic Liturgy was changed in 1962 – Not merely the language, but the orientation of the priest, the degree of lay participation, the ordinaries – pretty much everything – providing a relatively bright line between the kind of Liturgy that was more widely attended generally and (if the disparity is even accurate) attended by men in equal numbers. The Tridentine Mass has a very emotional appeal, but is more one of mixed sadness and joy than the Novus Ordo – more classically dramatic than a generalized sharing of good will, and perhaps the former appealed more to the spiritual sense of men than the new mass.
True. Even though I’m an atheist now and fully aware of the damage the Church has done, it’s pretty disgusting watching the Catholic Church grovel before the Bush Administration. Hell, I thought Bill Donohue was an asshole back when I was still Catholic.
but Dreher’s insistence of reforming a common female experience of great pain for great love into a masculine virtue smacks of womb envy
See, I’ve always interpreted Christianity itself as womb envy, fetishising the myth of this one dude who sacrificed his body for the wellbeing of his loved ones in some symbolic and mysterious way, in order to distract from the sacrifices of the millions and millions of women who are doing that all the time in an actual literal way without becoming chief prophets of the biggest religion on earth for their pains.
Or maybe being educated Catholic has made me jaundiced and cynical. But honestly… “Take this, all of ye, and eat from it… this is my body, which I have given up for you.” In EVERY Mass. How is that NOT simple, straightforward envy of the female ability to nurture other humans with their bodies?
but Dreher’s insistence of reforming a common female experience of great pain for great love into a masculine virtue smacks of womb envy
See, I’ve always interpreted Christianity itself as womb envy, fetishising the myth of this one dude who sacrificed his body for the wellbeing of his loved ones in some symbolic and mysterious way, in order to distract from the sacrifices of the millions and millions of women who are doing that all the time in an actual literal way without becoming chief prophets of the biggest religion on earth for their pains.
Or maybe being educated Catholic has made me jaundiced and cynical. But honestly… “Take this, all of ye, and eat from it… this is my body, which I have given up for you.” In EVERY Mass. How is that NOT simple, straightforward envy of the female ability to nurture other humans with their bodies?
gah, sorry for double post! It said it hadn’t been submitted!
why do you think there were all those perceived ‘extra’ women around for Mormon men to marry in multiples?
Actually, a general trend towards spinstership rose dramatically in the 19th century, across American/British society. This is part of the reason you see so much emphasis in Victorian literature on being marriageable and finding a man — before (and now), it had been taken for granted that there were always enough men to go around, and while you wanted to marry well, eventually there would be someone for you. In the 19th century, due to colonialism and the industrial revolution (and the US Civil War later in the century, and probably the Irish potato famines as well), it was suddenly entirely possible that there wouldn’t be anyone for you if you didn’t have mad skillz.
This may, of course, have led more women with more time on their hands to take on a more active role in church. And women were extremely active in the second great awakening. Some of those women, who ended up in Mormonism, might have been persuaded to buy into polygyny (though there are a great many more reasons for that than just “Church Iz 4 Teh Bitchiz”.
and much of the rest of it, especially some of the Fundies’ favorite passages, was ruled unimportant for Christians by Paul. (i.e. all of the law in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers) - the opoponax
don’t get me started
Paul completely misrepresents the Law. Jesus, even as reported in the Gospels, actually hews very close to the Law … and, indeed, a more severe version of it than what would be considered “mainstream”.
Of course, the fundies who are wont to quote Leviticus, etc. (indeed because they view those books as more “manly” than Jesus … even if they would never admit to not viewing Jesus as manly enough), are viewing Leviticus, etc., through the prism of how those books have been presented in Christian teachings (as are those who are criticizing those books in, e.g., liberal fora) rather than, e.g., how those books actually are.
E.g. — Leviticus spends for more time and places far more interest in redistributing wealth to the poor (via tithes, the prohibition against gleaning, etc) and keeping the land in good shape as well as preventing any slide into feudalism (the laws of Sabbatical and Jubilee years) than it does with prohibiting teh hawt gay sex (which might not even be the intent of those verses). But which do the fundies (and the anti-Levitical critics of the left) latch onto?
The Hebrew Bible isn’t the books either the fundies nor some people here think they are.
Of course, it’s that perception that’s the issue. Jesus is perceived as unmanly (and worshipping him, even less so) … and the Hebrew Bible (even if J was a woman!) is perceived as more manly. Etc.
And, as people here have pointed out … none of this is new. But that doesn’t stop religious conservatives from blaming women’s rights or cheezy 1970s music.
“when you see fundie men spouting off biblical verses and “calls to action” their focus is completely on the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures; what-have-you) and not on the New.
Actually reading of the bible would tell you that a lot of the hate, nastiness and doom’and’gloom embodied in those books was over-ridden by the preaching and words of Jesus.”
Then why is my wife’s synagogue about 40% male on Friday night and not particularly conservative? We have a control group in the experiment.
I go to a Unitarian Universalist church, which is a very liberal denomination that is hardly considered Christian anymore (We stopped requiring a belief in Jesus long ago, and I think the last time a survey was done only about 10% of us called themselves Christian). We also have more women than men come to church, just like the conservative churches. In our church though, it’s not that men are telling their wives to take the children to church, because the women in our church are mothers/childfree, gay/straight, married/partnered/single, come alone or with a partner and/or family, but most of the men come only with their wife or girlfriend, or sometimes mother. There’s a few gay men who come to church, but mostly, the men don’t come if a woman doesn’t take them, and even then they often don’t come.
I have no idea if that’s the way it is in wingnut churches. I tend to avoid them. One effect this has on our churches that I don’t think it has on wingnut churches is that our leadership and ministry are becoming more and more female. More than 60% of ministers in the US and Canada are women, and when I was involved in the leadership at the district level a few years ago there was all of one guy who got involved at all (and so we made him the chairman… yeah).
There’s been some complaints from some men in the denomination that it’s bad that men are outnumbered, especially in the leadership and ministry. Fortunately, the ones who get all stupid about it and say that we’re emasculating them tend to just leave instead of making us listen to their prattle. I’m guessing women in conservative churches aren’t that fortunate.
So, yeah, the problem with men not going to church is bigger than just conservative wingnuts being misogynistic. I’ve thought about it a lot, but I’m really not sure why women seem to enjoy church much more than men. It’s weird.
Isn’t this just the same as it being the woman’s job to remember the inlaws’ birthdays? Going to church is part of maintaining status and connections in the community, a lot of places. It seems really obvious to me that women would get that job.
Apologies: that was meant to be kind of sarcastic. In hindsight, it just sounds nasty though.
It would have been more accurate to say that a lot of the hate, nastiness, and doom’and’gloom that fundies can locate in their favored translations of the bible . . . etc, etc, etc.
Having read both a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that I believe is currently favored by various types of Jews, the KJV of the bible, and the New Word(? I think that was what it was called) translation favored by some groups within Catholicism in my life, first, translations have a huge impact on what you can locate in the HS/OT itself.
I’m no Christian, and yet I found the whole Passion-of-the-Christ craze offensively jejune on a theological basis. Physical suffering is probably the commonest lot in death. There are actual limits to physical pain, namely torpor and thankful death.
Were the damn thieves any less “courageous,” for that matter? Obviously, Mel Gibson and a large subset of Christians labor under a 10-year-old boy’s concept of courage. What would really give Rod Dreher a boner would be to see Jesus kick a bunch of Bad Guys’ asses in a cold-blooded fashion, then suffer the gruesome demise of a war-movie hero.
Of course, there’s not much ass-kicking in the gospels, so he and his ilk must take what they can get.
Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick.
Paul completely misrepresents the Law.
This is neither here nor there wrt my comment you were replying to.
It’s not so much about Paul’s opinion of the Law and/or how he “represents” it, the bottom line is that going on 2000 years ago, it was decided, on Paul’s authority, that Christians are not subject to the Law. Christians don’t have to be circumcized. Christians can eat pork. And by that logic, Christians can be gay, and all the other current hot button issues that are often argued by fundamentalists via Law passages. If you accept the authority of Paul to make such a decision (which you must if you also want to consider his Epistles in the New Testament canonical), you must accept it in full. You can’t pick and choose which aspects of the Law you want to believe in (the fun stuff that allows you to stone Teh Slutz) and which you don’t (the lame stuff like keeping kosher).
Christianity does not recognize the Law as being binding on Christians. Therefore, you’re not allowed to wank over how you really ought to be able to enforce it on people you don’t like.
So much for that omnipotence thing if Jesus can’t compete with football.
I grew up Catholic and I don’t remember there being a dearth of men in my church. Men, in fact, had the Knights of Columbus, where they got to do clubby things and run spaghetti dinners and spelling bees. Women didn’t have a club of their own, just the ladies’ auxiliary to the K of C.
From what I’ve heard, fundie Protestant churches demand a lot more of the membership than Catholic churches do of the laity. Instead of church ladies, there are nuns.
Another reason I think that Catholic churches might not suffer from the “too girly” meme is that the blood and gore and suffering is front-and-center: in a lot of churches, there’s a big bloody crucified Christ hanging right over the altar, and the Stations of the Cross are very important. And then you have your idolatry — saints are traditionally depicted with something that identifies them, often with something referring to their martyrdom. I forget which saint it was that had her eyes ripped out of her head, but she’s traditionally depicted holding a tray with eyeballs.
Christianity does not recognize the Law as being binding on Christians. Therefore, you’re not allowed to wank over how you really ought to be able to enforce it on people you don’t like. - the opoponax
Of course.
My point was that when certain Christian do ignore Paul and wank over their selective readings of Leviticus, et al., because they are reading it through a lens supplied by someone who believes the Law to be something too severe to be applicable, they read it as a severe sort of blugeon (sp). If you read the Leviticus, et al., through the lens of “this is a Law … let’s see how we can actually impliment it”, you get to a completely different point of view. And, as hp points out, the translation matters a lot too.
Here’s an idea. Rather than argue over whether Paul fucked up “the law” let’s just admit it’s all a bit silly and get over religion.
The Christian Wrestling Federation had the right idea of mixing the gospel with the smackdown, because nothing says you love Jesus like spandex and face paint.
when certain Christian do ignore Paul and wank over their selective readings of Leviticus, et al., because they are reading it through a lens supplied by someone who believes the Law to be something too severe to be applicable, they read it as a severe sort of blugeon (sp).
It doesn’t matter why Paul decided the law should not be applicable. I wasn’t aware that it was because he saw Judaic law as being “too severe” — my understanding is that the decision was mostly utilitarian. If you want to go around converting gentiles, you should probably omit that whole “please to cut off part of your dick, plz” section. Christians decided, though Paul, that spreading the faith was more important than making sure all the goyim stopped eating oysters.
oh, and zuzu, that would be St. Lucy.
my favorite is St. Agnes, who carries her breasts on a tray (they were cut off so as to bleed her to death).
Jesse—not my thesis. That’s the thesis coming from actual Christians. I have no reason to disbelieve their own descriptions of their church.
Jesus spoke of love and mercy and tolerance, and only had that one meltdown in the church.
And what did he have the meltdown about? It was because the temple had allowed moneylenders set up shop inside the building and do business there. Which means that all of those megachurches that set up coffee bars and gift shops inside their building are in for an awfully big surprise in the afterlife.
Why is it that the fundies always insist on ignoring the clearest parts of the Bible?
(Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral here in Los Angeles has its gift shop across the courtyard from the church building itself. Cardinal Mahony is still goin’ to hell, though.)
I’d settle for a life in prison. And get Cardinal Law’s ass back over here and throw him in the clink too.
Which Jesus? Let’s remember, now, that the four gospels were written well after Jesus died (if he even existed). They should be approached more as historical fiction.
But, even if we accept them has having some truth value, we’re dealing with four different pictures of the guy. He wasn’t only love and mercy and tolerance. He was also petulent (think fig tree) and claimed that he brought a sword to this earth, and I believe it was he that first introduced Hell into the Bible. quite a guy.
Amanda, I think you’ve missed the mark a bit.
Men equate “touchy-feely” stuff with “femininity,” or “weakness.” So if the pastor has no balls and is unwilling to discuss any major controversial issues, then he will turn off that kind of guy.
Leaving aside for a moment whether or not that view is misogynistic–that kind of homily is boring and it turns just about everyone off. Contrast this to my priest, who is old and crotchety and just refuses to retire–he has no problem saying blatantly that the war is wrong or that the Bishop is a failure. He has no problem discussing sexual abuse scandals from the pulpit, or anything else that is tangible and applicable in our daily lives. Instead of this most parishioners get some kind of weak, diluted pap about “Are we really questioning our own faith life?” or some shit.
This is why The Passion was so well-received–not because it’s “macho” but because it’s “real.” It’s about “Look, see these guys taunting Jesus? See the blood? He died for them too, especially for them. If you can bless the person who scourges you, then you’re on the right track.”
Where Donahue goes wrong is to assume that what we need is “masculinity.” We only need realism. William Rutler wrote in A Crisis of Saints that the problem with the Church now was not a lack of virtue, but a lack of heroes–all the clergy are yes-men who passively allow abuses to go on under their noses. Where was the whistleblower in 2002? The saints, on the other hand, have always had a kind of intense realism associated with them–none of the martyrs was a beatific peacenik who talked in greeting-card platitudes. Look at St. Francis–THAT kind of realism is what the Church needs, not some kind of television masculinity pushed by old white guys.
Caveat, I should say “some men equate…” rather than the blanket statement “…men equate…”
Obviously not all men have this problem. Just the ones in question in this thread.
Amanda (55): Unless the hypothesis is from a noted, reactionary, disingenuous prick like Dreher who will fabricate any anti-woman bludgeon to fill his pathetic column space.
Maybe because WOMEN are more SPIRITUAL?
Petey, I think it’s you who’ve missed the mark a bit.
Well, yeah. No one’s arguing that, or that realism is more appealing. But since the issue at hand is why more men are staying home than women, there’s clearly something else to be examined.
Dreher thinks, apparently, that it’s completely clear why the above effects men more than women - men are just more invested in things being interesting, clearly! Everyone knows women don’t like things which are “tangible and applicable.”
The other option, of course, put forth by the commenter Amanda quotes, is that women find such things just as boring, but end up going anyway, due to family pressures and the “domestic chore” nature of such a church.
Ooh, yes! Thanks! I really need to get a guide to the saints. I’m a product of the 70s church, which was not so into the blood and gore and guts and things in my teeth and dead burnt bodies.
Ah, so all those guys in the moderation queue at Feministe were just recreating the Lives of the Saints or something.
Oh, and since I haven’t seen anyone mention this yet: Doug Giles is really into this Muscular Christianity thing as well.
You mean GULLIBLE?
I second the motion.
Maybe because WOMEN are more SPIRITUAL?
Where do these people come from? I mean, don’t they know where they are?
The especially cool thing about the story of St. Agnes is that she was martyred for refusing to get married, because she wanted to be an ascetic.
I’m not a Christian, and was never Catholic, but the lives of the saints fascinates me.
Ooh, yes! Thanks! I really need to get a guide to the saints.
Zuzu, check out Catholic.org’s Saints page. One of my favorite time wasters!
My only problem with churches and other religious institutions is when they function as fund-raising arms of the Republican party or holding entities (money-launderers) therefor.
I’m probably just bitter because my house stands less than a mile down the canyon road from Reverend Warren Ellis’ (The Purpose Driven Life) megachurch, Saddleback Valley Community Church. The Orange County Board of Supervisors should send them a yearly assessment just for the amount of traffic, litter, and pollution their 10,000 member congregation causes in the neighborhood, not to mention the environmental impact on Whiting Ranch Wildlife Preserve, just a few hundred yards from their north property line.
Oh…did I mention one of SVCC’s deacons was caught endorsing conservative candidates from the pulpit…and never investigated?
Funny how when clergy endorse progressive candidates, they get investigated by the IRS, but when the candidates are conservative, everything’s fine.
Part of my comment from the Sadly, No! thread tigtog cited: There was a story on NBC the other night that for the most part painted a dim view of men, while managing to insult women as well — men don’t go to church as often as women because church is “boring” (women like boring things, apparently), and ultimately new church services were developed in gyms for men too lazy to dress respectfully and too lacking in attention spans to pay attention to one topic for more than ten minutes, much less talk about anything they had anything less than total interest in. The one bright spot was that they were doing community service work. And I appreciated this dickweed author saying that the reason men weren’t going to church as often was because church was appealing to “women, wimps, and weirdos.” Thanks, dude.
Maybe I’m just sheltered, but having been raised as a christian, and having talked with my fair share of christians, how can any woman support the 900lb patriarchy machine that is Teh Bible? Seriously, it’s a religion that states flatly 1) Men make all of the descisions, ie “headship”, and 2) All of humanity is screwed because a woman (Eve) fucked it up for the rest of us.
What part of that is not repulsive?
the 900lb patriarchy machine that is Teh Bible
Maybe I have the edited version? Because I have a clothbound copy of the New International Version at home, and probably weighs more like a pound and a half.
Also, it doesn’t “state flatly” either of the two things you just asserted that it does.
Some women eat it right up, Rich. It’s baffling.
I’m embarassed to admit this, but I watched that show Wife Swap (or maybe it was Trading Spouses) last week or the week before, and in the episode one family was conservative/Christian/”patriotic” while the other was liberal/non-religious/peace-loving. Tension ensues.
The conservative parents had both served in the military. When the conservative mom went to live with the other family, she faced a lot of criticism from that family’s teenage son, who attacked her religion, support of Bush, etc. Since the members of the liberal family all shared chores, the son insisted that on cleaning up after dinner one night. The conservative mom refused to let him, because “it’s the woman’s/mother’s job to take care of the family at home and do all the chores. The husband/dad shouldn’t have to do any of that because he’s the head of the household.”
The son was horrified by that and asked her how she could see herself as inferior to or less important than her husband. Her response?
“In the bible it says that women are to be punished for the sins of Eve, who disobeyed god in the garden of eden. She did something very bad, so women are to be subservient to men.”
I almost choked. I mean, I know people think that, but to hear a woman actually say it is frightening. And she served in the military! Don’t most of these freaks think women shouldn’t serve in the military?
I think part of the reason women have–at least in the past when fewer middle class women worked outside the home–been the big “let’s go to church” proponents in families is just to get out of the house. For a lot of women, (perhaps especially for those who are SAHMs) it provided/s a place where they can be involved in a community outside of the family, where they can take on different responsibilities and (limited) leadership roles (teaching, leading music, serving on committees, etc.). Although growing up Mormon I was just told that women are naturally more righteous than men and that is why there would be so many more of us in the Celestial Kingdom, thus making multiple marriages necessary. I, of course, thought this was bullshit and kept wondering why we let the boys run everything if they were so sinfully-inclined.
Sorry if this is a double-post. Perhaps there was too much literal blaspheming going on for god to let it through.
One of the problems is that folks have decided to change what virtues are manly.
It’s not manly to be brave and walk away from a fight (knowing that you’re risking having your opponent sucker-punch you); no, it’s manly to go in there and KICK ASS!!!
It’s not manly to accept that the world is a scary place, and we really do have to accept some measure of fear that someone will get their hands on dangerous weapons… no, it’s manly to go in there and KICK ASS!!!
(”Go in where?” you ask, and a very good question that would be. The answer is obviously “Iraq” because that’s where enough manly men thought you should go.)
It’s not manly to recognize that war is horribly evil, and should be a last resort because the people who suffer the most are those who deserve it the least. It’s manly to … well, you get the idea.
They’ve taken adolescent fantasies about what’s manly, claimed that *is* what it is to be manly, and then whine when churches aren’t sufficiently like Stallone and Schwarzenegger marathons.
I think part of the reason women have–at least in the past when fewer middle class women worked outside the home–been the big “let’s go to church” proponents in families is just to get out of the house.
Steph stole the words right out of my mouth. I could see that for a woman at home with small children, church would be a nice respite from her isolation and give her time to meet up with friends. At most of the megachurches, the kids are shuffled off to Sunday School and/or the infant playroom, giving the adults some time to be with other adults without the kids constantly hanging on them.
Not to mention all of the volunteer opportunities and Bible study groups that your husband can’t really forbid you from doing because he’ll look like a jerk in front of the community. So you have a perfect — spiritual, even! — excuse to leave the kids with him and go off to do something that interests you.
Okay, here’s a question for my fellow Catholic survivors:
I swear to god that when I was a little kid reading one of those “Lives of the Saints” books that there was some saint who became that way by performing his juggling and acrobatic tricks for a statue of the Virgin Mary and the statue cried real tears at the end of his performance. Did I hallucinate this, or was this a fake saint that they made up for kids, or what?
I am absolutely stunned by this. The male supremacists stay at home because the NFL or F1 is so much more important than church.
…and Sarah, I’m really glad that I haven’t gotten into Wife Swap. Typical neocon woman that was switched into the progressive family. My response would have been the same as the progressive son. The neocons actually believe that men are the kings and women are the slaves.
let’s just admit it’s all a bit silly and get over religion.
MAJeff, I believe you discussed rather recently how in your experience, all of your peers are either non–religious or attend churches not because they believe in in God but because they’re interested in the social action aspects of the community. It strikes me that your perspective on the issue of religious interests in groups of people might be a bit provincial and limited.
It always struck me that a compelling explanation for why Judaism was determined through matrilineal discent was because, invariably, it’s the mother who’s responsible for the spiritual upbringing and spiritual identity of the children. The mother always ends up taking up the bulk of responsibility for this one. As far as church, sometimes it’s not just football that keeps the men home, sometimes it’s work. In my family, the husbands all worked weekends.
It’s hard for me to come up with a model that explains both why men are more attracted to some forms of worship and why women seem to dominate in almost all congregations (from Unitarian to Quaker to Christian). Is it the Patriarchalism that attracts men? Well, Mormon churches are heavily female, and while all the Catholics I know who adhere to the Tridentine mass have been men, with one exception, in Europe those congregations are much more heavily female. While Drehr’s (and my) own Orthodox Church have a reputation for being ones in which the husband is the one who draws the family into the faith, of those attending church who were raised in it, the congregations are, once again, more heavily female.
One possibility that reconciles Dreher’s claims and the phenomenon of men being in fundamentalist groups and the experience of female-dominated churches is that men are frequently attracted to the challenge of the new and difficult and unusual. Once a spiritual practice becomes culturally embedded in the family over the generations, the men are less conscientious (or take responsibility for non-church family issues, like the family business, on sunday) while the women stick with it to maintain the family practice.
And? Does that make god any less artificial? Does that make religious beliefs any less silly?
Atticus Finch was a PUSSY!!!
And Constantine, you must have also missed the posts where i talk about my sister, and ordained minister. I’ll also add: my aunt’s partner, (an ordained minister), my parents, (devout Methodists), and the rest of my relatives, (whacked out Dutch Calvinists).
Mnemosyne, I googled all sorts of permutation of “juggling saint” “juggler lives of the saints” “juggler mary tears” “patron saint of jugglers” etc. and got nothing. What kind of a relationship did you have with hallucinogens as a child?
“Put down your superhero costume” - Oh, come on! What’s cooler than a bunch of well-muscled men running around in tights, wearing their Speedos on the outside?!?
Anyway, I think if they wanted to make their nonsense more ‘manly’, maybe they should point out the bits where if you don’t do everything exactly the way they say and don’t live in abject fear of this thing they call ‘dog’, then you’re going to suffer for eternity. Oh, maybe this god-thing gets a bit bored and decides to mess with your life just to make sure that you love it just enough (or fear it, seams to be about the same thing).
I’d question that analysis a little, Amanda. It would be interesting to know how the gender imbalance breaks down on married/unmarried dimensions.
Obviously, my experience is not representative, but in churches I’ve been involved with there’s been close to parity in gender among married couples and families. The gender imbalance came in because there were lots of unmarried women but virtually no unmarried men. Of course, a significant part of this is just that women live longer, so there were a lot more widows. But my sense was also always that a lot of this came down to sex. Because of prohibitions on premarital sex, men tended to either get married early or get the hell out. But there was a population of women for whom the anti-sex atmosphere of the church seemed to offer a kind of safety–because they’d been abused or seriously hurt by men in the past, because of severe body image/eating disorder issues, or because anti-sex messages growing up had done a number on them and they really were absolutely terrified of sex. I want to be clear that I am NOT suggesting that women in general like sex less than men or have less sex drive. But it did seem like there was a subpopulation of single women that had a much easier time accepting the church’s views on premarital sex that didn’t have a male counterpart.
My guess is that the best way for churches to re-macho themselves and remedy the gender gap would be to re-evaluate their teachings on premarital sex, but I’m not holding my breath on that one (which is unfortunate for me, as a single woman who does believe but also likes sex.)
Petey Wheatstraw:
The saints, on the other hand, have always had a kind of intense realism associated with them–none of the martyrs was a beatific peacenik who talked in greeting-card platitudes.
This view of peaceniks seems self-contradictory to me. I wouldn’t call the Catonsville Nine platitudinous or boring.
“Intense realism” often does involve confrontation, and sometimes that results in violence. But that doesn’t mean it’s pro-violence. At its best, it defies violence, sometimes encountering violent resistance in the process.
I think it takes some courage for a cleric to say that the war sucks, that we should protest it, that we should write our representatives, that it’s immoral. S/he may not encounter violent resistance, but probably will be called a coward, anti-American, or, quelle horreur, “girly.”
how about:
“men are not socially discouraged from being attracted to the challenge of the new and difficult and unusual”
Mnemosyne, I googled all sorts of permutation of “juggling saint” “juggler lives of the saints” “juggler mary tears” “patron saint of jugglers” etc. and got nothing. What kind of a relationship did you have with hallucinogens as a child?
Well, we did have fluoridated water …
$.02 from me.
Niether of my parents are church goers, and I’m not either, so I have to go with my grandparents.
Paternal Grandma attended all required Catholic services; every sunday and the ’special days’ also.
Paternal Grandpa was a closet athiest who refused to go because it was ‘hypocritical to attend a service when you didn’t believe’.
Maternal Grandma attended every Sunday and special days (Methodist).
Maternal Grandpa was a believer but thought that attending every Sunday was woman’s work (and besides, his head hurt that early on Sunday morning, since he spent Saturday night drinking).
So, call it 50% thought that Sunday church was for women.
Mnemosyne, maybe it was this story:
Our Lady’s Juggler
“But then one night, and no explanation has been found for this, he took his small little blanket and his eight juggling balls and went to the chapel. He stood in front of the statue of Our Blessed Mother and gave her the only talent he had, the art of juggling. At that moment something extraordinary happened. The statue of Our Blessed Mother almost came alive with radiance that Barnaby had never seen before.”
The story is attributed to Anatole France. Google on
“anatole france” barnaby
And you’ll get many good hits. it’s been made into an opera, films, and even a TV special.
I’d still like to know who the patron saint of juggler and acrobats is.
“I’d still like to know who the patron saint of juggler and acrobats is.”
St. Genesius
http://saintspreserved.com/genesius/St_Genesius.htm
Patron Saint of performers, clowns, lawyers, and epileptics.
(I was a wannabe actor, and attended a Catholic school)
Regarding the whole juggling saint thing, there was also a children’s book called The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola that retells the story. I don’t think that the clown became a saint though.
Mnemosyne, maybe it was this story:
Our Lady’s Juggler
Yes! That was it! Thank you thank you thank you! It’s been driving me nuts for years.
“manly men staying home”
When has that ever been true? Ever? “Manly men” usually go out and the girly thing to do is stay at home.
No matter what, manly men are screwed.
Send ‘em to my house. I’ll help out with that.
“No matter what, manly men are screwed.”
Send ‘em to my house. I’ll help out with that.
I’m not sure trolling a feminist site for casual sex, especially casual gay sex, is an efficient use of time, Jeff. Mind you, I managed to make a very intimate friend from a professional library mailserve, so who am I to talk?
Personally, I’m all for the manly Christian Soldiers marching Onward As To War - we agnostics and atheists will stay home and keep the womenfolk company.
I’m not. After all, the Christian soldiers’ war is against me.
I’m not. After all, the Christian soldiers’ war is against me.
Sorry, I should have stressed Marching Onward *Over There*.
Rest assured that their war is against me as well. I’d rather blow you in front of TV cameras on the front steps of the White House than pretend to agree with these cretins for a little personal peace.
I used to work in a “living history” museum, in the part where we did foundry work in colonial fashion. My co-workers were a religiously mixed group, but none terribly intense about it: one day, my boss, who was very interested in things historical, went home and looked up the patron saint of founderers and bell makers. he evidently came to the sainthood for (among other things) denouncing the marriage of the son of the local warlord / baron because he - get this - discovered him in bed with both his new bride AND the bride’s mother on their wedding night.
My boss was like “damn, our patron saint sure is a fun spoiler”.
I go with the consensus oppionon that you see more women at church because A. widowhood and its social outlets (this is true for my grandmother and literally all of her freinds at their near-dead tiny methodist congregation)
B. Getting your children off to school in time, making sure they are presentable, and also conform to general social standards (i.e. religous ones) is considered women’s work, so that if you’re a man who hasn’t bothered to involve himself in the larger life of the church, there really isn’t a whole lot, other than being an obvious prop and figurehead, holding you there
and lastly, C, the whole it’s a fairly safe environment for women who don’t enjoy the company of the opposite sex, for whatever reason (for some reason, my church growing up had a fair number of heavyset and horribly complected women in their late 20’s and early 30’s involved in various lay ministries)
…then again, there was the day I accidentally wandred into the church parlor (a quiet and seldom used space) and found my associate pastor, looking to be in a state of emotional distress, with his head in the lap of some young woman, who was stroking his hair and evidently feeling really bad about not being able to cure his likely gayness.
Ya know, Christianity has produced some pretty good stuff–Bach is my favorite. Listening to the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir do Bach’s Magnificat and selections from the Weinachtsoratorio, plus a couple other selections, had me in tears last December. But, I don’t need the silliness of the Christmas story to appreciate the beauty of Bach’s take on it. (and let’s get rid of “Ein Feste Burg ist unsre Gott”–15 years since I took German so give me a break). But this soldier shit, this muscular christianity, this whole thing is such shit.
Just be good to each other, appreciate close relationships, revel in beauty, and enjoy pleasure…and do each with responsibility to self and others.
To hell with religion, this is my crede.
Give ‘em Antarctica to fight over, but with only Columbia jackets and no fossil fuels.
I grew up protestant in a small midwestern town. My father was a professional who grew up in a small southern town. His father wrote hymns and both his mother and father taught Sunday school and were looked on highly in the community. He came from the time when church going was the main social activity of the important people in town. I can remember going to church with my grandparents and the obligatory after church brunch at a local restaurant. To not attend was an affront to your community.
So, in the same vein and also in that my father ruled the household, we all attended church regularly and participated in all church activities. The church was a place where social activities occurred, with house parties and the like and even some bland activism on the part of some missionary drive or something.
I wasn’t exposed to the practice of women dragging the kids to church while the man of the house stayed home until my adulthood and mostly among Catholics, whose participation seemed more like an obligation than a social activity.
I’ve attended fundie churches in different areas of the country, although that was in the mid to late eighties. Then, in my experience, participation of the entire family was demanded. A man’s lack of participation was scorned and most usually such would be addressed by home visits — their firmly misogynistic roots require that the man receive his instruction in order to lead the family on the right path throughout the week.
A non-attending man would be seen as a weak man.
Possibly it is a sign that the fundies are losing their hold with a large portion of society and the men are acting out their given authority to represent this.
I also agree with the notion posited that single, unmarried women may find church attendance a safe social outlet. I know there were a few single women, especially the lonely widow or spinster types.
But, still, I assert that in my experience in the midwestern conservative protestant sects, total family participation was mandatory and a slacking man of the house was looked down upon.
I’ve got the Saint Sebastian pincushion, but I’m still looking for a Saint Lawrence grill.
So many good comments, so little time.
I grew up Catholic and never noticed a lack of men in church. Of course, it is a sin to miss mass, which explains why the church was so full. However, it was obvious that most of the people weren’t paying attention and were there just to get their ticket punched. They didn’t want to be there, and would often take their communion “to-go”, leaving right afterwards before the end of mass. Many of the older Catholics had been raised to believe that if you went fishing instead of going to mass, you could go to hell for such an infraction. However, most of us younger folks stopped going after our parents quit making us go.
The Novus Ordo is a very beautiful (and much simpler) liturgy than the Tridentine Mass, however the English translation of the Novus Ordo used in the US is terrible. It is both prosaic and inaccurate. Worse yet is that very few of the parishioners care about what is going on. More importantly, most Catholics don’t want to pay for anything related to worship. My experience with Catholic worship is a dull, awkward, liturgy accompanied by bad, dated, 1970’s era “contemporary” music played on 1970’s era electric instruments by a handful of parish volunteers. (My personal taste is fairly traditional, but unfortunately, when mass is done in a more traditional manner, it is usually accompanied with a strong dose of right-wing theology.) It’s not that the Novus Ordo is so bad, but that it is too often done so badly that is the problem.
I understand the appeal of how the anti-sex atmosphere could appeal to some women, especially younger women.
Sex sells, and sex is sold as a commodity. Sex is commercialized, and it is commercialized to women of younger and younger ages. They make thong panties for middle schoolers.
It should come as no surprise that many young women are uncomfortable with this. Since the anti-sex message of the church is the complete opposite of the commercialized sexuality of the culture, it has an appeal. Church can become a sanctuary for women who are uncomfortable with or are not ready for sex. It is a way of delaying dealing with their sexuality.
Oh, I don’t know. There seemed to be fair quantity of hanky panky going on the the youth groups I was involved in.
the anti-sex atmosphere
I’d be careful about drawing on the image of some Christian churches to form assumptions about the whole religion. I grew up in the Episcopal church, and I don’t remember any particularly “anti-sex” atmosphere. There definitely wasn’t a whole lot of talk about it, and probably, had I stuck around to be confirmed (I was more interested in Wicca by that point), there would have been the obligatory Abstaining Until Marriage talk. But our congregation wasn’t psychotic about it like some Catholic and fundie denominations are.
I think the expression yall are looking for is probably “nonsexualized”. Which I’d agree with wholeheartedly — I have quite a few young single girlfriends who are religiously active partially because it’s an interest they can pursue without being constantly put in sexual situations, or feeling like they’re in a meat market. Which, after my recent attempt to play on a co-ed pickup soccer league, I totally understand.
Since the anti-sex message of the church is the complete opposite of the commercialized sexuality of the culture, it has an appeal. - wayward
But is it really the opposite. It’s still a case of sex selling … it’s just that what’s being sold is “teh hawt sex is teh evil” rather than “you will become popular and sexy by buying our product”. Other than that, I see your point.
BTW … there were a reasonable number of fundie-types where I went to high school and where I went to college. Maybe it was because I was a horny Jewish boy, but I always thought it odd how you’d see all these attractive young women showing a little cleavage … but right around the cleavage was a cross, which Dr. Freud might have told us is rather a phallic symbol.
but right around the cleavage was a cross, which Dr. Freud might have told us is rather a phallic symbol.
Yeah, but Freud would have considered a Georgia O’Keeffe lily a phallic symbol.
Heinlein addressed this issue in “Stranger in a Strange Land” where he invents the “Fosterite” church that shows football on a giant screen after the services. There are slot machines in the church too. no doubt to give the women something to do while the men are watching the game.
Just because there are more or less equal numbers of men and women in a congregation does not mean that the men feel represented. Usually men must vastly outnumber women before they consider themselves adequately represented.
That’s a better description of what I was trying to say. While it is not uncommon for “good Christian kids” to have sex, there is less pressure to do so than in the general culture. It’s easier to say “no”, since you’re not supposed to be doing it anyway.
I would also say that the more mainline churches are “nonsexual” while the more fundamentalist churches are “anti-sex”. Churches that aren’t obsessed with the evil of teh sex simply don’t talk about it.
Furthermore, Dreher’s view of the passion, which is shared by many on the right, shows more about his view of God than his view of Jesus.
For Dreher, and those like him, God must be bloodthirsty and angry. Jesus is important because God took his anger out on Him instead of us. But God is still an angry, vengeful, character.
Or you can see the story as the story of a man who taught humanity a better way to live. This provoked the ire of the local religious leaders, who were no longer necessary in the new paradigm, so they convinced the imperial governor that he was “dangerous” and needed to be crucified.
The miracle of the story is not that He was crucified, but he seemed to have gotten better by that Sunday.
But to top it all off, this (androgynous) guy is better than you as he’s in touch with his feminine side — and you are urged to do the same and emulate him by doing feminine things like painful sacrifice for love?
Of course macho men wouldn’t want to go to such a church. You’ll notice that the sort of church environment the macho men want would tend to, um, ignore the actual message of the Gospels?
Simpler than that: Going to church means learning that you don’t get to do whatever you want whenever you want. which doesn’t sit well with some of our more, um, religious folk.
The hypocrisy is starting to hurt my head.
Though I have to say, when I was trolling for sexual partners, evangelical churches were full of women who would do anything, no matter how off the wall, in prodigious quantities. The main problem was then you had to listen to their religious bullshit.